Big Mountain Traveler

Hi, everyone.

My name's Jason Chau. I recently graduated from animation school and I like to draw. I hope to become a character designer and illustrator. This is my first project of this kind and I would love to get some feedback. Thanks all :)

Step One: Shapes. I had a lot of fun doing this part. At first, I never really enjoyed doing thumbnails, but I'm slowly getting to like it by not putting so much pressure on myself and just having some exploring different shapes.

Step 2: Action Poses: I found this part a lot more difficult, thinking of what a samarai would do.

Step 3: Expand one.One thing I notice about my tendencies, and maybe this is true for all beginners, is that I tend to want to focus on details.

Step 4: S-C curves: This part was fun, and I managed to minimalize some of the details through this process. Something kind of off in the arms and legs though... I think.

Step 5: Anatomy: from the anatomy, I realized how the legs didn't actually support the skeletal structure. It blew my mind when I saw Dennis use this check as part of his process. It makes a lot of sense. I still find the hands difficult to do.

Step 5: after anatomy check.

I wasn't really that satisfied with this character. He seemed flat. I didn't want to spend a bunch of time on something that I didn't feel good about initially.

So I decided to keep the general shape, but change the pose.

I felt good about this one. The anatomy check, and everything was helpful. I decided to go a step further and check some anatomy too. Like the teacher said, flipping it was really helpful.

I decided to reduce the size of his nose, because it seemed to distract from the overall shape. In this stage, I used the S and C curve check. I also decided it would be funnier to have him eating a donut. Also, he's not actually a "Samarai" anymore at this stage, because the sword isn't a samarai sword. I think he's more Chinese now.

During the final sketch phase, I added a background. I decided to change the position of one of the legs too.